Baltimore Orioles: Five Things We Want To See In The 2020 Season

John Means was fantastic for the Baltimore Orioles last season. Now do it again.

I don’t know about you, but I spent much of the season waiting for John Means to implode. As a life long fan of the Baltimore Orioles who is 31 years old, I’ve come accustomed to not having nice things or watching breaks go in favor of the O’s, so I assumed that the emergence of Means was a bit too much to be true.

With a full year under his belt and every American League team having a more developed scouting report on him, how will John Means perform in 2020? Hopefully, we see that he’s for real and is someone we can rely on to stick in the starting rotation when winning is routine in Baltimore again.

His fastball may not carry the upper-90s velocity, but it does have a high spin rate and wasn’t a terrible pitch in his first full season in the majors. On the other hand, his changeup limited opponents to a .207 average and produced a whiff rate of 25%. It was the 8th highest rated changeup in the majors, according to Fangraphs.

We’re not expecting John Means to be the ace of the Baltimore Orioles, but the All-Star lefty is the very early favorite to take the ball on Opening Day and performed head and shoulders above the rest of the rotation in 2019.